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NC State Stands Up to RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Technician Online at North Carolina State University reports that its Director of Student Legal Services, Pam Gerace, has advised students to remain anonymous, and has indicated her office's willingness to challenge the RIAA's subpoenas. What's more, the newspaper urges students to take Ms. Gerace up on her offer. The fighting spirit of Jimmy Valvano lives on."
The site works for me... maybe it's because I'm an NCSU grad.
appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
We need more groups officially banding together like this - the RIAA's bully tactic days are numbered!
I feel more like I do right now than I did a while ago.
It looks like people are finally starting to get it. Big fish can't be allowed to attack the little fish without facing risk.
Now, if only the general public realized they bring this on themselves by continuing to fund the **AAs with their purchases, maybe it'd actually make a difference...
Turning coffee into code.
I wonder if the RIAA will ever stop and realize that if they'd just fought this war fairly, most people would have been understanding with them. That if they'd did all the legal work they should have, and caught people with fair tactics, that jurors and the general public would be on their side. Because it IS against the law to download Intellectual Property you don't have rights to.
But instead, they decide the law doesn't apply to them anymore and use as many underhanded and illegal tactics as they can. Now it doesn't matter if the RIAA is right, nobody in their right mind could possibly side with them.
This is completely disregarding the entire concept of following the advances in technology instead of trying to fight them. If they'd simply tried to embrace technology and make it easy and quick to buy music, instead of doing everything they can to make it painful and slow... Maybe they'd actually be making more money than ever.
Instead, they've now got entire countries talking about legislature to make the copying of intellectual property legal.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I love NC State's policy toward the RIAA's stalin like tactics. While they do punish students on their own accord the entire legal department is against the RIAA's method of approaching students. I am very proud to work for a university that values copyrights while at the same time education it's students about their rights and current law.
On top of that then steps up and practices what it preaches.
I'm surprised students are not rallying to deal with the RIAA. Traditionally, college students have been one of the largest markets for recorded music. And the RIAA is directly attacking their traditional best customer with law suits. I would have expected campus rallys to fight the RIAA. Students obtaining pledges to boycott RIAA labels and distribution of lists of labels to boycott. Just surprised that theres no organized effort on the part of students to counter this.
[Insert pithy quote here]
No, it's not wrong, merely confusing to those who haven't heard the term before. For example: Florida State University is usually just called 'Florida State' when talked about. When talking about the actual state, it's said 'The State of Florida'. Always.
NC State is the same way. Any time the government is talking, they'll call it the State of NC. NC State will always be the university.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Unfortunately, if the university's adminsitration isn't behind her (and they might well be, viz acedemic freedom), she could get reversed and reprimanded. Worse since the Regents ulimately report to the NC Legislature. Still, acedemics _can_ be cantankerous. And are expected to be or tenure would not be granted.
I used to live both on and off the campus, connected to the university's blindingly fast network. The wholesale violations of copyright law that I committed, that my dorm mates and fraternity brothers committed, that everyone within my entire social sphere committed were about on par with what you would suspect from a major state university. I could snag most full-length films in 20 minutes or less, and most full mp3 albums in a few minutes tops. Stealing went on then, and it probably goes on even now.
It might be useful to prattle on about how draconian and unjust copyright laws may be--to decry business models as antiquated and unrealistic and so on. But it would be a jury argument, not a legal one. The fact remains that these students probably *DID* do what they were accused of doing. And they probably *DID* know they weren't supposed to, and did it anyway. To couch wanton lawbreaking as political speech, as many of the more articulate "fuck the RIAA" folks tend to do, is just intellectually dishonest.
NCSU has a chancellor that writes open letters to the students telling them to "respect the DMCA" and NCSU's stance on student's intellectual property is to take it away from them and claim it belongs to the university. This one instance does not make NCSU grand or great and I will not applaud them until they do the right thing elsewhere within the University as well. Before anyone responds with "That's how it is in real life" or some other bullshit answer I encourage you to go look around at both employers and other universities practices in regards to employee/student developed IP. Most universities have started giving that IP to the students and do not keep it for themselves as NCSU does.
I'm pretty sure you're absolutely full of shit. Most Universities (and all that I've been a part of), and pretty much every company on the planet require grad students/employees to sign over rights to what you create. If you're talking undergrad - where you pay the university - that might be different, but unlikely even then if you developed that IP with university property. For grad work, where the university pays you, the university keeps the rights. Sometimes there's a royalty sharing agreement, but you don't get to negotiate it.
As for companies, if you find one that lets you keep IP that you create as an employee, stay there. I've never seen such a company.
Not to rain on the submitters parade but Jimmy Valvano was fighting for his life from cancer these guys are only fighting suspected copyright infringement.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
And the first ad right below the summary is...
Report Software Piracy
Earn up to $200,000 for Reporting Pirated Software - All Confidential
bsa.org/reportpiracy
The argument I've seen used (successfully) in the past against this kind of point is that whilst the remote server is physically making the copy, the downloader is the one who caused the copy to be made (by starting the download process). That makes the downloader the only human responsible, seeing as you can't sue or prosecute a server. An analogy would be that if I shot you, I could argue that I didn't kill you - the gun did. In reality though, I caused the gun to fire, so it's my responsibility.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Breaking the law and then not taking responsibiliy for your actions isn't civil disobedience as Thoreau envisioned it.
Considering the number of people who fled speakeasies when they were raided in the '20s, I'm not sure how you can call that civil disobedience either.
DVRs/VCRs are illegal because you are copying data from somewhere onto media?
At first I thought downloading would cut and dry be against copyright law, but now I'm not so sure. I don't think the obligation to determine if the source is a legitimate distribution system should fall upon the user. By 'common sense', currently most P2P networks today with obviously copyrighted materials is a legally questionably thing to do (since you are definitely becoming the source), but what happens when a source with an air of legitimacy starts up a P2P based service that turns out to be illegal? Should users be penalized just because they were frauded and allowed their upstream bandwidth to be use by the company to commit copyright violation without their knowledge?
From a legal perspective, I'm actually finding myself thinking the only sane entity to chase would be the one who initially injects the content into the P2P network (i.e., the person who posts a torrent to a tracker). The second logical place would be the tracker itself if they have a demonstrated history of ignoring copyright notices, but the users, it's hard to say. Forget the technicality of whether the protocol borrows some of their upload, their action isn't really as different from using a DVR as one might think.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
You had better also read the agreement carefully. When DirectTV was pulling this stunt, they were including a blurb where you admitted to having committed copyright violation. Given that there are now criminal penalties on the books for copyright violation, you could very well be paying $3000 for a nice vacation to 'pound you in the ass prison'.
TechnicianOnline.com is not hosted on campus. It's hosted by CollegePublisher.com so that they can host advertising.
I actually work for NCSU and would be the admin for the Technician server if we hosted it. I'm pretty thankful right now that we don't.
Hmm, does that mean that the RIAA is willing to take on the 11th Amendment and go through state government to sue students? Something tells me the campus lawyer has this ace up her sleeve when advising students to refuse settlement offers.
This morning I received an email from Ms. Gerace directly, and it appears that the Technician Online article is not 100% accurate. In fact, the Office of Legal Services is not able to represent students in federal court, and the students will need to use outside counsel for the actual litigation. See correction on my blog.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Jimmy Valvano was a great coach and great person, who led an over-achieving NC State squad to an improbable, buzzer-beating victory in the NCAA men's basketball championship. His greater fight was his fight against cancer, which he lost in 1993 at the age of 47, but without ever losing his joy, his love of life, his love of, and respect for, people, and his boundless spirit.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful